1. Field
This application is directed at a method and system for a computerized online apparatus allowing users to engage in political prediction games based on contemporary American elections at the presidential, congressional, state, and local level, assigning points based on the results from the actual political election contests, the user's predictive accuracy relative to the actual outcomes and results of those aforementioned elections, and by comparing the user's predictive success relative to other users.
2. Prior Art
An estimated 32 million Americans currently participate in some form of fantasy sports competition, which involves a player competing against other players based on real-life statistics generated by the actual athletes and teams of a professional or collegiate sport. Every March, countless individuals test their predictive abilities by filling out upwards of 40 million brackets in the days leading up to the men's NCAA basketball tournament. Virtually every large scale sports website of distinction offers some menagerie of fantasy sports games—fantasy football, rotisserie baseball, pick'em games—to its customers, who tend to be employed full-time, college educated, and with household incomes in excess of $60,000 a year. The economic impact of fantasy games to the sports industry as a whole has been estimated at upwards of $3 billion annually.
While fantasy sports is now a multi-billion dollar industry that affects the very manner in which these sports are presented and reported, this was not always the case. Early manifestations of fantasy games that were based on real life sports were largely informal, usually made up of groups of people who would assemble Major League Baseball rosters that competed based on the assembled players' final standings in batting average, (“RBI”), earned run average (“ERA”), and wins. The American Professional Baseball Association (“APBA”) and the Strat-O-Matic were commercial sports simulations that employed this system, which were limited in that they relied on a player's performance from the year before to play the games. New systems evolved, most notably one credited to magazine writer David Okrent who, while meeting with like-minded baseball fans at the La Francoise Rotisserie restaurant in New York City, came up with the idea of awarding points based on statistics developed during and in the course of the season. This use of actual, contemporaneous statistics within an active season was a departure from the previous forms of fantasy games, which typically relied on the statistics from the past season. These types of games were eventually applied to other sports, including football, basketball, and hockey.
Advances in technology and the growth of the Internet over the last decade vastly expanded the scale, scope, and breadth of fantasy games. The popularity and relevancy of professional and collegiate sports, particularly football, has been augmented by these competitive leagues. Whereas in years past the average sports fan may have only cared to watch his or her favorite team or the top matchups, fantasy football now gives the viewer a rooting interest in virtually every game on the schedule—even the bad ones. The massive popularity of fantasy games has changed the way in which sports are reported and televised, as evidenced by the hundreds of fantasy sports-related websites, the numerous hours of television broadcasts involving the injury updates and statistical performance of particular players, and the omnipresent tickers which display in-game, real-time stats for various players during live sports broadcasts.
The American political process is the only other phenomenon that can rival collegiate and professional sports in terms of sustained viewership, media attention, and the zealous participation of its followers. The enthusiasm and excitement surrounding collegiate and professional sports is at times matched, and in many cases surpassed, by the passion many have in following and participating in the American political process. By virtually any metric, American politics performs as well as professional sports in terms of its visibility and engagement with the American people. On one single day, Nov. 4, 2008, more than 131 million Americans (all over the age of 18) voted in the presidential election, which roughly equals the combined total attendance numbers for the entire 2010-2011 seasons for every major professional American sport (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL). The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the 2012 elections will be fueled by more than $6 billion in spending, which is comparable to the estimated $6.6 billion that was spent on sports-related advertising and marketing in 2010 by the top advertising companies.
American politics is even able to compete favorably with professional sports in terms of television viewership. In 2011, the NFL and CBS set conference championship ratings records with 54.8 million people watching the AFC Championship game, which would be a below-average viewership for a presidential debate (which have pulled in excess of sixty million viewers numerous times). More people watched the Oct. 26, 1980 presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter (80.6 million) than watched Super Bowl XV the following January (68.2 million) or the series finales of Seinfeld (76.3 million) and Cheers (80.4 million), both of which are regarded as two of the most-watched single episodes in American television history. The opening ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was watched by nearly 70 million Americans, a television audience matched a few months later by the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. The television viewership for the 2008 vice presidential debate is also comparable to the number of people (70.6 million) that went to a movie theater to see 2008's The Dark Knight, regarded as one of the highest grossing movies of all time.
Until now, no suitable or reliable scoring system or method in a structured, competitive format existed to award points based on political election results. Unlike collegiate and professional sports, which have scheduled games that occur with relative frequency, political elections occur at various times throughout the year, varying from office to office, state to state, and cycle to cycle. Moreover, each state usually has no more than three elections per cycle (a presidential preference primary or caucus, a general state primary, followed by the general election in November). While most are aligned with the two-year general and presidential election schedule, some states' elections occur in off-season or odd-numbered years. Some races are contested, whereas others are forced into runoff elections. Polling is expensive and largely subjective, and its public availability is dependent on the budgets and the whims of local news organizations. Aside from the final vote totals and eventual Election Day wins or losses, there are few reliable objective criteria to be used as a basis for statistical analysis and scoring.
Scheduling and managing a competitive game, particularly during the presidential primary, is particularly challenging. There are no uniform standards from state to state in terms of how delegates are chosen and assigned. In fact, for the 2012 Republican primary season there are upwards of a dozen different methods employed by the states to select their delegates for the nomination process. Putting aside the manner in which these delegates are chosen and distributed, there is also a wide array of methods employed to hold the primary contests: some take the form of a primary election, caucuses, conventions, or a combination of these methods. In addition, the scheduling of these events is often in flux in the months leading up to the primary season. Using a recent example, numerous states attempted to move ahead of one another in the lead-up to the 2012 Republican presidential primary season, setting off a series of chain reactions that affected the primary and caucus scheduling of dozens of states.
Fashioning an engaging and compelling game is also complicated by various candidates' decisions whether or not to enter a race and—if these candidates chose to formally enter the race—how long they will sustain their campaigns until ultimately withdrawing. Some nominations have been informally wrapped up after a few contests, whereas others have continued well into the calendar without a nominee being decided upon. Some incumbents enjoy a primary without any competition, whereas others are challenged. While nominations are not actually formalized until the nominating conventions in late summer, many presumptive nominees have been decided upon months before the convention. This uncertain duration makes it particularly difficult to schedule any “head to head” contests or a playoff structure as traditionally employed in fantasy leagues.